Science & Tech Quote by Donna Summer

The bluntness here is the point: fame isn’t a fairy tale, it’s a business model with a pulse. Summer cuts through the sentimental mythology of stardom by naming what usually stays politely hidden. “Nobody wants you to stop” sounds supportive until she tags the real motive: “because you’re a moneymaking machine.” In a single phrase she turns the artist into equipment, something expected to run until it breaks. It’s not paranoia; it’s an industry logic that treats momentum as morality and rest as betrayal.

What gives the quote its bite is the pivot from “nobody” to “you.” The crowd, the label, the machine all have preferences, but only one person pays the price. “You have to make the decision and you have to move forward” frames agency as labor: deciding for yourself isn’t liberating, it’s work you’re forced to do against a strong current of incentives and pressure. The repetition of “you have to” sounds less like empowerment rhetoric than a hard-learned rule.

Then Summer lands on the most culturally loaded choice possible: stepping away to have children. “Have babies and do all that” is almost deliberately casual, as if she refuses to dramatize domestic life just to make it legible to an audience trained to see motherhood as an interruption. In the backdrop is the late-70s/80s pop economy that chewed through women at peak visibility, especially Black women, demanding endless output while policing their bodies and choices. Summer doesn’t ask permission. She states the cost, then claims the right to exit the conveyor belt.